The Spread that Dare Not Speak Its Name

I eat my hamburgers with ketchup. I always have, probably always will. What could be more American than a hamburger on a bun with ketchup on it? It’s just a great combination–a natural. You might say it’s a cherished tradition.

My wife, bless her, eats her hamburgers with Miracle Whip. It’s the way she was brought up, and I have a feeling there are millions of people brought up the same way. A hamburger and Miracle Whip is as natural to them as a hamburger with ketchup is to me. Honestly, I don’t get it. Why would anyone do that? I can barely watch her as she slathers on the white stuff and then consumes the sandwich. I mean, it’s still a hamburger, but it’s just–perverted.

You know what, though? I wouldn’t for a moment deny my wife the right to eat her hamburgers with Miracle Whip. I don’t like to look at it, or even think much about it, but it really doesn’t hurt me. I can go on eating my hamburgers my way, and she can go on eating her hamburgers her way. Neither of us is forced to change. Everybody wins.

I’m not comparing hamburgers with Miracle Whip to gay marriage. But I am comparing the arguments against hamburgers with Miracle Whip to the arguments against gay marriage. No matter how impassioned the anti-gay marriage folks get, it still comes down to “I don’t like that, so you shouldn’t do it.”

What other arguments against gay marriage are there? If we have gay marriages, the birth rate will become dangerously low? That doesn’t even make sense. It’s hard to imagine that gay people who are forbidden to marry will throw in the towel and procreate.

Gay marriage destroys a tradition that goes back millennia? Guess what? The tradition of gay relationships goes back just as far as the tradition of straight relationships. It’s, like, biological.

Gay marriage exposes children to an unhealthy lifestyle? The last I looked, heterosexual marriages don’t exactly provide an advantage against philandering, addictions, child abuse, or other unhealthy lifestyles.

The government shouldn’t have to provide benefits for an alternative lifestyle? Hey, from where I stand, being the CEO of a corporation is an alternative lifestyle, and CEOs get all kinds of government benefits.

God frowns upon homosexuality? Give it to me in writing–and I mean notarized.

No, when it comes down to the real meat-and-potatoes argument, the real hamburger argument, it’s all about personal preference. Some people just don’t like the idea of two men or two women going at it with each other, and it offends them so much that they think it should be forbidden. Many of these are the same people who protest that the government is too involved in their lives. Many of these are the same people who preach Christian love and tolerance. The hypocrisy would be astounding if it weren’t so common.

The sooner these folks realize that they’re foisting intolerable hardship on others merely because of their likes and dislikes, the sooner we can get past these ridiculous arguments.